How to rotate your car tyres

You need to rotate your tyres during every oil change or annually , whichever comes first. The overwhelming majority of the car-buyers have front engine, front wheel drive cars. If you have a hatchback or a mid-size sedan , your front wheels carry most of the car’s weight, they lay the power down, carry most of the braking force and they steer the car. They are bound to wear out sooner than the rear wheels.

You can always purchase two new tyres when the front two get worn out, but then you’ll have different grip levels on the front and rear even if you have the same brand and size, which isn’t a good thing.

This is before you factor in the lottery type availability of the tyres you want, which true to Murphy ’s Law will be available only when you don’t need them. Replace the entire set at the same time instead. The difference in wear isn’t as prominent in SUVs or rear drive cars, but rotation will help elongate tyre life anyway.

Get the spare tyre out of the boot and keep it handy. The idea is to get the rear wheels in front. So get one of the rear wheels off and replace it with the spare tyre. This is so that you use all five tyres. Else, when you use the spare when you have a flat you’ll have three tyres with roughly identical amounts of grip and one with superior grip. This is not a good thing in an emergency situation.

Now remove the front wheel on the opposite side of the car and replace it with the rear wheel you just removed. If this confusing , as an example if you just removed the left rear tyre, use it to replace the right front tyre.

Move to the other rear wheel and replace it with the front wheel you just removed. Lastly, remove the front wheel that you haven’t touched yet, replace it with the rear tyre you’ve just removed , and put the wheel in the spare’s space in the boot.

This is as far as you need to go if you’ve got standard tyres. If you’ve got performance tyres, read on. Some tyres have an asymmetric design. This merely means that the outside edges have to remain on the outside, so that doesn’t affect the pattern laid down above.

Some performance tyres are unidirectional. This means that they are designed to roll only one way forward, like motorcycle tyres. In this case you have to take care that the tyres on the left stay on the left, and do the same with the ones on the right.

If you notice uneven wear on any of the tyres, it’s a sign that everything isn’t right.